Court the favours of the BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation
BBC was looking for a home computer that could be used in combination with
educational programs. Conquering this order would of course provide great
benefits, because many schools and later also parents would probably
purchase these computers. Sinclair fought a bitter fight with Acorn,
incorporated by one of Clive's former co-workers. Acorn won the battle,
with as a result the well-known BBC A and BBC B computers.
Clive Sinclair was enraged and held a public tirade against the BBC. Why
did they choose for Acorn - he held told them that he could manufacture a
good computer for a bit more then 100 pounds! The Acorn-computers cost 400
pounds. Maybe the BBC decided for Acorn because of its much more solid
keyboards.
Clive Sinclair later told that there had been much discussion in his
company about the name for the new computer. One of the names that
circulated was 'Not the BBC Micro'...

ClonesBecause of the popularity of the ZX
Spectrum and the simple technical structure, many clones of this computer
appeared. Probably it's the most imitated home computer in the world.
Timex manufactured a Spectrum under licence, the TS 2068, for the
North-American market. But almost all other clones were illegal. De most
imitated Spectrums appeared in de Soviet-Union, in Eastern Europe and in
South-America. Clones were still made in the late nineties.

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Welcome to the nostalgic
history of home and game computers

SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM
the good, old 'speccy'

After
his modest success with the ZX80 and his already
bigger success with the ZX81, the Britton Clive
Sinclair scored a real hit with the ZX Spectrum. This again small but
surprisingly colourful computer would bring him a fortune and the title of
'Sir' in 1983. He received a knighthood from prime minister Margareth
Thatcher because of his merits to the British industry.
Even giant Commodore 64 didn't manage to dispel the ZX Spectrum from the
number 1 position in the United Kingdom. Sinclair sold millions of it -
the ZX Spectrum became the most successful computer in the UK and one of
the most successful computers in the rest of Europe.

SpeccyThrough the ZX81 many people got acquainted with the new world of the
computer, but the Spectrum turned working and playing with computers into
a popular habit. With its greater performances the Spectrum made it
possible for hobbyists to really conquer the new computer world.
Many people still have nostalgic thoughts on the hours (no: days, weeks,
months) they spent in the eighties with their 'Speccy'. And the Speccy is
still popular: there are few other computers for which that many emulators
can be found on the internet.

Overwhelming
interestSinclair announced the ZX Spectrum in April 1982 in
two versions: one with 16K and one with 48K RAM. Like the ZX80 and
the ZX81, the Spectrum initially could only be ordered by mail. The
interest was overwhelming and after a while the delivery suffered under an
enormous backlog. After the summer of 1982 the backlog in the plant of
Timex, that manufactured the Spectrum, had increased till 40,000. Sinclair
got a rebuke from the Advertising Standards Authority, because it couldn't
fulfil its promise to deliver within 28 days. Sinclair almost received
more complaints than orders, and Clive was forced to apologize personally
in a letter to his clients.
Finally the company succeeded to put things back on the rails, partly
because it also started to sell the computers through stores. After a year
and a half the counter of sold Spectrums had passed the one million.

ZX81 as starting-pointSinclair developed the Spectrum because its predecessor ZX81 got
increasing competition from more powerful home computers that could even
display colours. Besides, Sinclair wanted to win a struggle with Acorn for
an order from the broadcasting corporation BBC, but to Clive's bitter
disappointment he lost the game. (More about this in the frame at the
right.)
Initially fantastic plans lived in Sinclair's company to build an advanced
home computer with a Super Basic programming language. But to keep the
costs down, Sinclair decided to take as a starting-point as much as
possible the technique of the ZX81. That's why the Spectrum was developed
under the title ZX82.

Colours,
finally!In spite of this there were considerable improvements. That's already
clear when you only take a look at the outside: the little case with
coloured keys and a rainbow-like print looked great. And not only the
outside was colourful - the Spectrum was Sinclair's first computer that
could also put colours on the screen! And this was combined with a
resolution of 256 x 192 pixels. These graphical possibilities were the
biggest improvement, beside the in comparison to the ZX81 enormous
increased RAM. This memory was built-in (soon almost only 48K-Spectrums
were sold), which put an end to the trouble with the wobbling RAM
expansion packs of the ZX80 and ZX81.
Whereas these first computers veiled themselves in silence, the ZX
Spectrum was able to produce sound, albeit very modest. De price was, in
Sinclair's tradition, unmatchable low: 125 British pounds for a
16K-Spectrum and 175 pounds for a model with 48K.

CriticismThe ZX Spectrum got a for the most part positive
reception by the computer magazines, but of course also this time there
were critical voices.
The rubber keys made the keyboard less awkward then the keyboards of the
ZX80 and ZX81. But some critics referred to the rubber keys as 'dead flesh'.

Spectrum clone

Indeed, the Spectrum could produce colours, but its abilities in this
respect were limited. It could display eight colours, but on each square
of 8x8 pixels only 2 different colours could be used. This caused the
typical Spectrum effect of strange colour combinations, the so-called 'colour-clash'.
That's why some game developers only wrote games for the Spectrum in
black-and-white.

Many gamesIt's a question of the chicken and the egg,
but the popularity of the Spectrum was also caused by the enormous amount
of software that was especially written for this home computer. After a
hesitating start, caused by the lack of distribution channels when
Sinclair only sold by mail, many games and other programs were available.
The amount of hardware was also amazing. This time Sinclair manufactured
more hardware options itself, like the Interface 1 and the Interface 2.With Interface
1 one could connect Sinclair's Microdrive to the Spectrum or shape a
network of Spectrums. Interface 2 made it possible to use joysticks and
contained a port for cartridges. As far as I know there exist about ten
different cartridges (these Sinclair-cartridges were, of course, very
small).

Spectrum+This
model of the Spectrum was manufactured until 1984. But actually this was
only the beginning: the Spectrum persisted until the early nineties! The
first model was followed by the Spectrum+, the Spectrum 128, the Spectrum
+2 and the Spectrum +3. More about these models soon...

Specifications of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Manufacturer

Sinclair Research

Period

1982 - 1984

CPU

Zilog
Z80A

Frequency

3,5 MHz

ROM

16 KB

RAM

16 of 48 KB

Text mode

32 x 24

Graphic mode

256x192

Colours

8

Sound

speaker, 1 channel, 5 octaves

I/O

tv, cassette, extension port

Price

125 British pounds for the 16 K-model
175 British pounds for the 48 K-model

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